When We Cry
by Signy1
Summary: Losing family is never, ever easy, and there's something obscene about having to rummage through and pack away their personal effects. The questions they leave behind are even harder to handle. A young man, still reeling from the shock of a sudden loss, finds comfort, and, perhaps, closure while on a trip to Hawaii he never wanted to take.
1. Chapter 1

_Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee/ For those in peril on the sea…_

There was only so far self-control could go, in the end; the hymn was the proverbial straw that broke her tenuous grip on composure. The woman who hurried out of the sanctuary was openly crying as she left her pew, and was past caring if anyone saw. She'd already lost what she valued a great deal more than her dignity. Her son, looking helpless, hesitated a moment before following, and he reached the outer hall just in time to see the door of the ladies' powder room swinging shut. At a loss, he waited, staring numbly at the memorial plaques on the wall.

Mrs. Kelly found him there, and put a motherly hand on his arm. He summoned a weak smile for the old woman, who had sat in the pew behind theirs for as long as he could remember. She always had a peppermint candy in her pocketbook for a good boy; she also had a reproving flick on the earlobe for one who fidgeted in his seat during Mass, and both he and his brother had received their fair share of each. Especially the latter, until it had become a game; up until the day he'd left for the Navy, his brother had been masterful at wriggling just enough to get her attention, then disarming her with a smile and a wink.

"How is she doing, Mark, dear?" she asked quietly.

Mark shook his head. "We heard from the Coast Guard," he told her. "They're calling off the search." It hurt to say it aloud. They had known. After hearing the reports of the storm, as the days dragged by with no news at all, they had all known that… that nothing would be found. That there was nothing left to _be_ found. They had known. But so long as the Coast Guard was still searching, there had been a chance that what they all knew wasn't so, and now even that forlorn hope was gone. How was his mother _doing_? She was a wreck. She was a shadow of her usual self. She was devastated. How could he say any of that to the nice old lady from down the street?

Mrs. Kelly put a hand to her mouth in genuine grief, and a tear slid slowly down her cheek. "Oh, your poor mother. That poor boy. Please, dear—if there's anything I can do?"

He nodded. "Thank you, Mrs. Kelly," he said. Anything she could do. If only. There was nothing to be done, aside from the thousand things that no one could help them with. Arranging for a headstone, even if there was nothing to put beneath it. Sending someone all the way to Hawaii to pack up his personal effects. Legal paperwork, because it seemed that the government had a lot to say on the subject of missing persons, and it all needed to be filed in triplicate. Should there be a wake? Friends and family had been sending enough food to feed an army for a week (or his brother for a day,) and he didn't know if he could face one more casserole.

And maybe the old woman recognized that, because she enfolded him in a peppermint-scented embrace. He rested his head on her shoulder, free—for the moment—of the need to be strong for anyone, and just let himself be held. She made no further useless attempts at conversation, just stroked his hair, murmuring something comforting he didn't really hear.

Two weeks later, he stepped off the plane, blinking in the bright Hawaiian sun, and immediately peeled off his jacket. The tropical heat was intense; as if these miserable islands and this godforsaken ocean were conspiring to give him more reasons to hate them. Suppressing a snarl, he started towards the taxi stand, and from there to the address he had taken from one of his brother's periodic letters home. The sight of the house did little to improve his mood.

"His room is right this way," said the landlady, and he followed her down the hall, only half-listening to her no doubt sincerely meant condolences. The boarding house was Spartan in the extreme; as regarded the amenities, it was clear that neither effort nor expense had been attempted.

 _You didn't have to stay out here_ , he thought. The hallway smelled of cabbage. _You could have come back home once your tour was up! You could have gotten a job somewhere, something safe, something that didn't involve rattletrap boats or deadly storms. Dammit, little brother—why didn't you just come home?_

"Here it is," the landlady said, opening the door. "I called around, and I found you some boxes to pack his things. They're in the back; shall I get them for you?"

 _Of course. Dead men pay no rent, is that it? And once I've gotten his things packed and gone, you can find yourself a new tenant. Wouldn't want to delay that a moment longer than necessary._

"Thank you," he said stiffly. "That's very kind." He nodded a polite dismissal, and walked into the room.

Bed, dresser, table and chair, lamp… the stale air in the small room didn't smell as strongly of cabbage as the corridor had, but that was about all Mark could have said for it. The only window faced the sea. He opened it as far as it could go, letting in some badly-needed fresh air, and he looked out, putting off the moment he would have to begin his grim task for another moment or two. Mark didn't notice the 'stunning beauty of azure sky and sapphire water', to quote one of the more insipid brochures he'd seen at the airport, or feel 'the intoxication of salt-kissed breezes,' ibid; he looked at the ocean and saw an enemy. With a sigh, he turned away, jerked open the first dresser drawer, and began piling socks and underwear on the lumpy bed.

The sum total of a life, he thought several hours later, should take up more space. There had been clothing in the dresser. Hairbrush, toothbrush, razor and the like. A fishing pole and meticulously organized tackle box had been propped in one corner; a butterfly net in another. A bongo drum, which must have been a real delight for his neighbors. A radio. A camera. A small box with his Navy medal and dog tags; a large manila envelope full of letters from home. Some battered comic books, a couple of seashells on the windowsill, and assorted other bits and pieces of ephemera. Nothing very large, nothing particularly valuable; his brother had lived lightly on the world, and had left little to show that he had existed at all.

An album of butterflies caught his attention. Each one was carefully pressed and labeled—Monarch, Swallowtail, Sandhill Skipper and so forth. So far, so unremarkable. Each one, however, had also been given a name—Jim, Lou, Al, and the like. Later, in a different pen, he had apparently gone back and carefully added a 'Dr.' to each one. He stared at a page for a moment, trying to understand the point of that, when it hit him. The addition made them scientific names. He had written the butterflies' scientific names in his album. The absurdity, the completely _logical_ absurdity of it all, was his brother in a nutshell, and he almost laughed, almost cried.

There was also a shoebox full of photographs. Most had descriptions written on the back in the appalling spelling that had been the despair of every teacher in the district. He riffled through them; they were in no particular order, and pictures of family Christmases, childhood friends, pets of various species, and a great many relations were intercut with snapshots from his Navy days, fish caught, any number of people he didn't recognize, and Hawaiian scenes. And, over and over, a stocky man with a wide smile.

One picture—the stocky man and his brother standing on a dock, one of them on either side of a mock ship's wheel with a sign advertising chartered tours, and both grinning like fools—bore the inscription _Me & Skipper—the Minnow's maydin voyej!_

"You," Mark whispered, glaring at the photo. "This is your fault. You _bastard_ ," he hissed. It wasn't fair, and it didn't even make much sense, and he didn't much care. "You and your damned boat." He threw the picture back in the shoebox, none too gently, and closed his eyes, fighting to regain control of himself.

His brother had been happy in that photograph, on that boat. Happy wasn't even the word for it—he had all but glowed. He was…. No, wrong tense. He _had been_ happy here. In this dismal room, on that ramshackle boat… he had been happy. Mark swallowed hard, picked up the photo again, studied it.

 _You were never coming home at all, were you? Whether it was his boat, or some other one, or another hitch in the Navy… why? I just don't understand. What was out here that you wanted so damned badly? Didn't you care about us at all?_

He looked back at the window, and its view of the ocean, and stood up. He had to get out of this room. He had to get away from his questions. And he had to get a closer look at the enemy that had seduced and taken his brother.

OoOoOoOoOoO

He found his way around the marina via the simple tactic of asking people who looked like they knew what they were doing. Efficient it was not, but it did work; eventually, someone was able to give him directions to the Minnow's slip. He would never have found it on his own. The mock ship's wheel from the photograph was still in place, but it was unrecognizable under the dozens of leis draped over and around it. Some were wilted, others fresh; a great many people, it seemed, had been paying their respects. He stood there and stared at it, no longer sure why he had wanted to come. What had he expected to see? A ghost ship sailing into port?

"Good men, the both of 'em."

Mark spun to face the voice; it was a man he didn't recognize. Broad-shouldered, with greying hair and a somewhat weatherbeaten look to him, smile lines more or less permanently sunburned into his face. He leaned past Mark to hang yet another lei over the sign. "It was one hell of a storm. It would have taken one that bad to get those two. Good men. Good sailors."

Mark nodded, and turned away, back to the ocean.

The man, unrattled by Mark's stony silence, went serenely on. "I'm Horowitz. Gave 'em a hand on the Minnow a time or two. You?"

"Mark," he said, after the silence had dragged on just a moment more than was comfortable. Obviously, the other man was not going to go away. "Mark Gilligan. My brother was on the crew."

"I wondered about that. You kind of look like the Kid."

"You knew my brother?"

"Half of Honolulu knew your brother," Horowitz said. "And Skipper, too. The other half just heard the stories. Come on," he said. "Let me buy you a drink. You look like you need it, and God knows I do."


	2. Chapter 2

Somehow, without ever consciously deciding to do so, Mark found himself following the man to a hole-in-the-wall pub called, predictably, Barnacle Bill's. "A lot of us ex-Navy and charter boat sailors come here on the regular," Horowitz told him. "All locals; none of those tourists come here. We're here to get _away_ from the tourists. But for you we'll make an exception." The inflection he gave the word 'tourist' made it fairly clear that it was being used as a euphemism for any number of other words, none of them polite. He waved Mark to a bar stool, took one himself. "Hey, Bill—look what I got here. The Kid wasn't an only child."

The bartender—Bill, presumably— looked at the two of them, shook his head with a sad smile. "Well, I'll be damned," he said. "One minute." He turned away, filled two foaming mugs, and set one before each man.

Mark took a sip from his, then made a face and set it down. "Coca-cola?" he said in disbelief.

Bill laughed. "Your brother was a character," he said. "I remember the first time they came in here. Old Skipper, he orders his drink, and tells the Kid, pick anything you want. So the Kid, he thinks for a minute, then asks for a chocolate malt."

"And Skipper starts in trying to tell him that they don't make chocolate malts here, pick something else, and so he asks for a _strawberry_ malt!" Horowitz was laughing now, too.

"So Skipper, he's trying to keep his voice down, so's you could only have heard him in Maui instead of all the way back on the mainland, and the Kid's arguing with him about what exactly 'anything you want' was supposed to mean, and Skip trying to get him to understand that a bar wasn't like the corner drugstore." The bartender gestured at the mug in front of Mark with a smile. "Eventually we all compromised on soda pop, and so that was what he ordered every time they came in."

"Wait a minute, Bill," Horowitz said. "That was what he ordered, but it wasn't always what he got, right, Entwhistle?"

Another sailor joined them. "Hey. Hey. We only spiked his drink that one time," he protested. "And he was face down on the bar practically before he finished it. It hurt us more than it did him, anyway—I thought Skipper was going to kill us!"

"Skipper thought so, too," Bill said dryly. "You were just lucky that you could outrun him. He didn't much appreciate that you'd taken it on yourselves to buy the Kid a round, and you know as well as I do that it wasn't just the once."

Mark, to his own surprise, chuckled. He could imagine the scene, and somehow, miraculously, it didn't hurt. "Mom made him promise, before he left home," he told them. "Don't drink, don't smoke, always be respectful to ladies, keep your language clean, and about a hundred other things I don't remember."

"Don't act like a sailor, in other words," Entwhistle finished. "You can tell your mom that he kept his word, anyway."

Bill slid another mug—this one containing beer—down the bar. "Here. Jettison the soda. We won't tell your mom."

Mark smiled a bit, and took a drink. "So… did he come here a lot?"

"Sure did," Horowitz said. "Often enough that we all knew to grab our glasses and hold on tight when he walked by, anyway. Him and Skipper, both. I told you, this is where the charterers and us other sailors all come to get away from the tourists."

"He used to tell these crazy stories about the different folks on their tours," Entwhistle said. "Nothing mean—I don't think he knew how to be mean—but the way he told 'em! Did all these different voices, and made it all sound like it _wasn't_ just a bunch of idiots getting underfoot and oohing and ahhing over the same damn islands you'd sailed around yesterday and the day before that one. It was like listening to a comedy show."

"Not just that," Horowitz said, frowning thoughtfully. "It wasn't just funny. It was like… every trip he took around the islands was Christmas morning. All brand new and exciting, every single time. And he talked about their passengers like waiting hand and foot on whiny mainlanders was the greatest thing since sliced bread and he couldn't believe his luck."

"We're talking about Skip and the Kid, right?" Yet another man joined them. "Say, Bill, you gonna just let a guy die of thirst over here?" Bill poured him a beer, and he raised it in a respectful salute to the lost before taking a slug.

"Who else?" Entwhistle shrugged. "Hey, McDermott. Say hello to Mark, here. The Kid's brother. Pretend you wasn't raised in a barn, wouldja?"

"Oh. Hi," he said. "Mark, was it? I'm sorry. Yeah, Skip had one hell of a good thing going. Look at their passenger manifests, and, I'm telling you, there were more'n a few of us wondered how he did it. They were never empty. Even the Hollywood types and other big shots from all over the place; if they were going to go island hopping at all, it was usually a safe bet they'd end up on the Minnow. The rest of us got the leftovers."

"Yeah," Horowitz said. "And it's not like she was the Queen Mary. She was your average little pleasure craft, no better or worse than any of the hundred other tubs around the marina, all giving pretty much the same tours with pretty much the same box lunches. Throw a rock and you'll hit three different boats all doing island cruises. Don't get me wrong. Skipper was a hell of a sailor and a real great guy, but it's not like the tourists could know that by looking, right? But they all ended up on the Minnow, anyway."

"We figured it out after a while," McDermott said with a half-smile. "The Kid was his ace in the hole. Five minutes after they met him, he was everybody's best pal. All the girls wanted to pat him on the head like a puppy dog, and all the men felt like they was mighty explorers out for adventure. Long John Silver, Horatio Hornblower, Columbus sailing the ocean blue… all mixed up into one. He made them _want_ to go for that cruise, and word gets around. If I coulda shanghaied him onto _my_ boat, I'd've done it so fast your head would spin. Would've been worth all the accidents."

"You and everybody else. Don't forget the agent," Entwhistle said. "She helped their business a lot." He turned to Mark. "It's like this. They go out one day, with this woman on board who's sicker'n a dog almost before they've weighed anchor. And I do mean sick; she must have been throwing up everything she'd eaten since birth. So what does he do? He spends the whole tour holding her hair while she fed the fishes, bringing her a Dramamine, and water to rinse her mouth, keeping her calm, telling her that everything's gonna be all right, she could trust the Skipper. Turns out she was with some travel company, or a magazine or something, and she'd been scouting out the best places to send the tourists. No prizes for guessing where she pointed all her clients from then on."

"He was a catastrophe waiting to happen on land, no insults intended, but steady as a rock once you got him out on the blue. And like I said, he had some sorta magic touch with the tourists. Couldn't help liking the Kid, even if he was a bit on the clumsy side. You can tell your folks he did good," McDermott said, and cleared his throat, uncomfortable with even that brusque a show of emotion.

Mark wasn't much more comfortable listening to the eulogy than McDermott was delivering it. He fumbled for a question, some way to shift the subject. "You all called him 'Kid'?"

Entwhistle gestured with his mug. "I'm going to go out on a limb and say that he must have _had_ a first name, but damned if I ever heard it. I barely use my own, let alone anyone else's. Skip called him 'buddy.' But compared to the rest of us, he was barely out of short pants, so yeah. Kid."

"Huh. I figured you were going to tell me it was short for 'Captain Kidd,' or something nautical like that."

"You know, I never even thought of that. I wonder if he thought so, too," Horowitz chuckled.

"What he thought… I wonder what he thought he was doing out here," Mark said, finishing his second beer. When had that happened? Silently, Bill slid him a third. "I was cleaning out his place before I came over here, and that dump should have been condemned years ago. I saw pictures of that deathtrap of a boat he was working on, and the only surprise is that it held together as long as it did. Do you have any idea what this is doing to my mother? What the hell kind of hold did this place have on him? How could he do this to us?"

"This place…? These islands, you mean, or is it the ocean in general you're talking about?" asked Entwhistle slowly.

"Either, I guess. Or maybe both. I don't know anymore." There was something wrong with the beers here; they disappeared far too quickly. Probably the glasses leaked. Like the damned boats did. That had to be it.

Horowitz shrugged. "You seem like a nice enough guy, but you're just a landlubber, and I'm not real good with words. I don't know if I can explain to you what it is that keeps guys like us out here on the water. 'Cause it's hard work, and there sure ain't a whole lot of money in it, and there's no room for mistakes at sea. It's just… something that either gets you, or it doesn't. It got me, and Skip, and, yeah, the Kid, too. It's just in us, and there's no fighting it. He was living the only way he wanted to live."

Mark scowled. "Living the way he wanted to live got him killed."

"Sooner or later, living gets all of us killed," Horowitz said.

"You get that out of a fortune cookie?" Mark snapped. "Next you'll be telling me that he _wanted_ to go down with the ship. That drowning is some kind of wonderful fate for a sailor."

Horowitz gave him an even look. "No, mostly sailors want to die the way anyone else does—of extreme old age, with a just-emptied glass in your hand and a pretty girl on your knee, the day before the rent's due. Watch your mouth, sonny. You're grieving, I get it, but we are too."

"Oh, right, I'm sure you're all just devastated. He wasn't just some guy I saw in a dive bar every once in a while," said Mark. "He was my _brother_. What the hell do you know about it?"

"As opposed to some guy on the other side of the planet I never saw at all?" Entwhistle asked Bill with cutting sarcasm.

"I was in the Pacific during the big one," Horowitz said, ignoring the byplay. "Started the war as one of three. Ended it as an only child, and that's not even counting all the men I served alongside who weren't as lucky as I was. You don't get to tell me what I do or don't know about losing brothers." He drained his beer, glared into the dregs at the bottom of his glass.

Mark didn't want to know what he was seeing there. "I'm sorry," he mumbled, and looked away.

Horowitz nodded. "You're grieving. I get it," he repeated. "Were you guys close?"

Mark felt his throat close up. He _was_ grieving. He was. And he was also guilt-stricken… because he wasn't grieving enough. "No," he admitted in a voice only a tone or two removed from a whisper. "He was… a lot younger than me. Kind of a pest, when we were kids, you know? I was older, and I didn't have all that much patience for a dopey little tagalong. And then he was gone, except for a letter every once in a blue moon that Mom would make everyone reread at every single Sunday dinner… and then he was gone."

Horowitz nodded slowly. "Thought not. Sad I'd have understood. Angry, I get. You? You looked guilty. You got to know it wasn't your fault, but that doesn't help much, does it."

"If I'd been a better brother…" Mark murmured.

"If it's brothers you're talking about, he had one. Don't doubt that," Entwhistle said. "He'd've crawled through hell for Skipper, and that hadda be at least partly because Skip would've crawled through hell for him. Everyone knew it, and passenger manifests weren't the only thing we envied the both of 'em."

"Times like this, people don't cry for the one who goes, even if they think they do; they're cryin' for themselves, and for the rest of us left behind to weather through the storm," Horowitz said quietly. "And you got reason to cry; there's a lot of stuff you won't get because of that storm, a lot of memories you won't have. I'm sorry for you, sonny, I really am."

"I wouldn't have had them anyway," Mark said slowly. "He wasn't ever coming home, was he?"

Entwhistle and Horowitz looked at each other. Horowitz made a 'go ahead' gesture with the hand that wasn't holding his beer. "No, probably not. Not if you mean wherever you're from. That wasn't home anymore," Entwhistle said.

OoOoOoOoOoOoOoO

Author's Note: I'm not entirely certain, but I believe that 'Barnacle Bill's' is fanon, not canon, and if so I am indebted to the original author thereof. I also have to thank Callensensei, whose story 'The Biggest Wise Guy of All' gave me the excuse I needed to have the regulars at Bill's use the nickname 'Kid,' rather than continuing to repeat variants of 'your brother' ad nauseam.


	3. Chapter 3

_No. It wasn't home anymore. If it ever really was in the first place_ , Mark thought. He still remembered that last day. It had been a beautiful Sunday in late June, with all the windows open to let in the sunshine and the birdsong. His mother, as usual, had produced a meal fit for a king, and she looked at her little family, all together around her table, almost fit to burst with pleasure at the sight. His brother, unusually, had barely touched his dinner, and he looked like a mouse surrounded by cats. Finally, after pushing food around his plate for a while, he'd just put down his fork and cleared his throat.

 _"I've joined the Navy," he'd announced with no preamble. "So I'll be leaving for basic training. Tomorrow."_

 _Their mother had burst into tears. Their father had turned red. He was a tiny, slender man, and even smaller in soul than he was in the flesh. Life hadn't given him the breaks he felt he'd deserved, and he resented it, and took it out on anyone he could safely overawe. His eyesight was terrible, to the point where he was half-blind, even with the thick glasses he wore. He'd been 4-F, medically unfit to serve, and he didn't like being reminded of it._

 _It was only one of a great many things he didn't like, and, unfortunately, both his sons had a place on that long and exhaustive list. Among a thousand other grievances, real or imagined, he'd never forgiven Mark for going on to college instead of working for him at his garage, which to him meant that Mark thought he was better than his father. (Which Mark_ _ **did**_ _, although education or lack thereof didn't factor into that assessment.) His tongue was far sharper than his vision, and he made no secret of the fact that he thought his younger son was a halfwit at best._

 _"Well, this is a sad day for our armed forces," he'd said. "Someone ought to warn the fleet."_

 _"I want to serve my country," he'd said doggedly._

 _That, sadly, only gave his father more ammunition. "Son, the best thing you could do for your country would be to defect to Russia. We'd have the Commies licked in a week."_

 _Mark had stopped caring what the old fiend thought of him a long time back. He'd moved out the moment he'd been able, and he only came home for these miserable family dinners to please his mother. God knew she had little enough else. He wished his little brother could have learned the same trick, but at least he was getting_ _ **away**_ _. It was something._

 _He had stood his ground, though, the hurt in his eyes all too obvious, but not letting it get the better of him. "Well, I'm going, anyway. I'll… I'll make you proud."_

 _"We're already proud, dear," his mother had said, valiantly choking back her tears. "I know you'll do splendidly."_

 _His father had only snorted, abruptly uninterested. "Just try to make sure that you sink more of the enemy's ships than you do ours."_

The other men were quiet for a moment. "No offense intended to your family," Horowitz said conversationally. "But your old man sounds like a real piece of shit."

"Yeah, I'd agree, except that's offensive to shit," Mark agreed. "Finally gave himself the heart attack he'd had coming while—while 'the Kid' was still overseas," he said, smiling faintly. "You've never seen a more cheerful funeral. Mom was finally free… but I know she was hoping he'd come home after his tour was up. A second chance, you know?"

"I'd guess we all want one of those somewhere along the line," Bill had said thoughtfully.

"Yeah… but she never knew I told him not to," Mark confessed. It had been that same last night, and he'd pulled his brother aside as he was getting ready to go home.

 _"I'm glad you're getting out of here," said Mark. "The Navy will be good for you. See the world, adventure on the high seas, all that."_

 _"Boy, I sure hope so," he'd said. "I'm kind of just a little teensy bit nervous."_

 _"Don't be. You'll do fine. But do yourself a favor… don't come back here, okay? Forget this place. Dad… well, you know he's not going to get any nicer. Especially not after you cover yourself in all kinds of military glory like I bet you will."_

 _"You really think so?" He looked almost shy._

 _Mark smiled and pulled his keys out of his pocket. He opened the ring and slid off a little steel charm in the shape of a four-leafed clover. "I know so. Here, take this. Luck of the Irish, right, Admiral?"_

 _He'd laughed, and taken the charm. "Thanks, Mark," he'd said, and saluted._

"Sounds like good advice to me," Horowitz said. "Is that what you're beating yourself up about?"

"If I hadn't told him to stay away—"

"If you hadn't, he'd have stayed anyway," Entwhistle said. "What part of 'he liked it here' are you not getting? He had a job, he had buddies, and, sonny, I've seen Pennsylvania, and Hawaii's a helluva lot nicer. You didn't do nothing wrong."

"Wait. You said a four-leafed clover? So that's where he got that thing. Never took it off," Horowitz chimed in, and signaled Bill to pour them all another round. "Said it brought him good luck. And let me tell you, it must've worked, because some of the scrapes he got in, luck's the only explanation for how he got back out again. He ever write you about the outrigger canoe races?"

And there were more anecdotes, and more beer, as the night wore on. And it wasn't that everything was all better, because it wasn't, and it never really would be. But some of the bitterness began to leach out of his memories as they talked and laughed over the old stories, and that was miracle enough for one night.

OoOoOoOoOo

Bill put away the last glass. Mark's head was pillowed on his arms, and had been for some time. "I think you fellows overdid yourselves a tad," Bill said with no particular heat.

"Ah, the poor sod needed it," Horowitz said, slurring just a bit. It had been a memorable evening all around. "His head'll be hurtin' come morning, but 'side from that, I betcha he'll feel better'n he did yesserday. Issit still yesserday, or are we into tomorrow yet?"

"Now you're sounding like the Kid," McDermott complained. "And I'm in no kinda condition to figure whatch're talkin' about."

"I'm talkin' 'bout our new pal here. He needed to get drunk off his ass and get all that crap off his chest."

"Not saying you're wrong, but he's not sleeping _here_ ," Bill said.

"He's prolly stayin' at the Kid's old place," Horowitz reasoned. "C'mon, Entwhistle, gimme a hand. Upsy-daisy." He draped Mark's right arm over his shoulders; Entwhistle took his left, and together, they heaved Mark to his feet. His eyes opened blearily.

"Wha—what's happenin'?"

"Bill's closin' up. We're gettin' you home 'fore you take a long walk straight off a short pier."

"Huh?"

"Never mind." Entwhistle winked at McDermott. "This brings back a memory or two, huh? Bill's right, it wasn't just the once."

McDermott laughed. "Yeah, well. We could use Skip around now; he could just've tossed him over his shoulder like a duffel bag. Let's get this show onna road."

Mark woke up the next morning with the hangover to end all hangovers, which may have been why it took him a few moments to figure out exactly where he was. He was, it transpired, lying on an iron-framed bed, fully clothed except for his shoes, which, apparently, his new friends had removed for him. The boxes containing his brother's possessions were piled where he had left them, except for the one he just barely remembered knocking over as he'd staggered for the bed.

Amid the welter of somewhat random personal items now strewn across the floor lay a small book with a worn leather cover; Mark had its twin in his own bookcase back home. It was the Bible he'd been given when he was seven years old. Mark picked it up, and something fluttered to the floor from between its leaves, where, presumably, it had been put for safekeeping. It was another photograph, a picture of the three of them. Their mother, laughing at some long-gone joke and radiantly happy, and her two sons. His brother was not looking at the camera; he had an arm looped around either of the other two, and he was grinning at Mark, with that glittering, inimitable mixture of mischief and innocence that was all his own. It was labeled _My howle famelly!_

"The 'howle' family, huh? You knew there was a 'w' in there somewhere," Mark murmured, and chuckled a bit. Their father was not present in the picture, not even as a memory, and that was correct. That was how things should have been. The three of them, together, were a 'howle' family, one intertwined unit. In a kinder universe, they would have had more time. But then, in a crueler one, they might have had less. Perhaps things evened out in the end.

He repacked that last box, but slipped the photo into his pocket instead of returning it to the book where he'd found it. He stacked the crates somewhat precariously by the door, then walked to the window. The sunshine streaming through the uncurtained glass was blindingly bright, and it scattered itself across the surface of the sea like a carpet of diamonds, and he had to catch his breath a little.

The ocean was untamable, and unpredictable, and dangerous when it chose to be. But despite all that, despite what the sea had cost his family… he had to admit that it was beautiful.

He walked back to the marina one last time, stopping at a stand along the way to buy a lei. He hung it over the ship's wheel with all the others, faded and fresh alike, and looked out at the horizon. "I still wish you'd come home," he said, aloud. "I wish we'd had the chance to be friends, instead of just brothers. I suppose I'll always wish that." He cleared his throat. "But I… I am glad you found a place for yourself. You deserved that. I'm sorry I wasn't more of a part of it—I cheated you, and I cheated myself, and I just hope you can forgive me."

He stopped, not sure what else he wanted to say. 'Goodbye' was too final, 'I love you' too cliché. So he said nothing, just started away. Three steps away, he stopped, spun back around. "Oh, and your pals at Bill's all say 'Hi, Kid.' You were definitely smart to stick with the Coke, though—wow, can those guys put it away!" A faraway smile teasing at the corners of his mouth, and just a hint of moisture at the corners of his eyes, he stood up straight, looked out at the endless ocean, and beyond it, and saluted, because his brother had never needed words to understand.

Then he turned away from the empty slip, and he left without looking back.


	4. Chapter 4

Mark stepped off the plane. The Hawaiian sun was still as bright as ever, but this time around he'd known enough not to bother wearing a jacket, and the sunshine felt like a kiss on the cheek, rather than a kick in the teeth. He turned back to the door of the plane to help the woman behind him disembark safely; she smiled at him with a sort of fond exasperation that said, quite clearly, that while his fussing was sweet, and she appreciated his concern, if he didn't knock it off, he was going to hear about it. Which was, admittedly, quite a lot of meaning to pack into a momentary flick of an eyebrow, but her ability to communicate volumes without saying a word was one of the things he loved about her. He ignored the warning and kept a careful hand on her arm as she stepped onto the tarmac, not so much for her sake—she could take care of herself, which was another of the things he loved about her, actually—but for the baby in her arms.

It had been several years; a lot had changed in that time. Good, bad, and indifferent; nothing stood still. Not even Barnacle Bill's ramshackle pub, which looked less welcoming than ever, at least to those outside the family-by-choice brotherhood of mariners that routinely gathered there. Mark himself had been allowed in only on sufferance, and for his brother's sake, not his own. They had looked at him, though, had seen an angry, grieving, guilt-stricken mess that most people would have been perfectly justified in ignoring, and they had delivered their own brand of rough-edged sympathy, binding up wounds he had scarcely let himself admit were there. They had done this for a stranger who shared nothing with them and little more than a last name with a man they had known and liked. It was a debt he didn't know how to begin to repay.

He looked around now, and realized with a pang that it wasn't the same. Oh, Bill still stood behind the bar, and still poured him a mug of soda with a sly smile, but several of the old salts he had met on that long-ago trip to Hawaii were now doing their drinking in Fiddler's Green, and, while Bill had, so far, stubbornly kept his establishment a tourist-free sailor's refuge, the increasing contrast between the grubby bar and the glossy buildings to either side made Mark suspect that Bill was fighting a losing battle. The old man was, in all likelihood, short-timing it, and the bar would probably not be there the next time they came to the islands, or, at least, would be gentrified past all recognition. Mark sighed. One more link gone. Good, bad, or indifferent, nothing stood still.

"Well, would you look at that," Horowitz said, standing to greet them. "How've you been, stranger?"

He was older, too. He walked with a stoop Mark did not remember him having on their first meeting, and his hair had gone from grey to white. The smile lines were cut more deeply into his flesh, and had been joined by others. His face was hollower than it had been, his eyes more deeply set in their sockets. But he still carried himself with the quiet dignity of a man with nothing to prove to anyone, and the welcome in his smile was no less warm than it had been when they had met at the Minnow's empty slip.

"I'm good, Horowitz. How've you been?"

"Same old, same old," he said, waving a hand dismissively. "The sea's still a beauty, the tourists are still a headache. Who's this lovely lady? Too pretty to be any relation to the likes of _you_."

He rolled his eyes in fond exasperation. "Take it easy, sailor. This is my wife, Angela. Angie, this is Horowitz. He was a friend of my brother's. Heaven only knows why."

Horowitz grinned, unoffended. "A pleasure to meet you, my dear. Welcome to Hawaii."

Angie smiled and adjusted her grip on her child, turning him to face the old man. "It's good to meet you at last," she told him. "Mark's told me a lot about you all. This is our son. Say hello, Brendan."

"Brendan, huh?" Horowitz looked at the child carefully, from the dark fuzz on his head to the pink toes with their infinitesimal nails. "Looks like a keeper," he said approvingly. "Bring him back in a year or two and I'll give him a spot on my crew."

Angie laughed. "Perhaps a little bit longer than that. First we'll have to see whether or not he takes after his namesake. I get seasick just _looking_ at a boat."

"Ah, we can fix that fast enough," Horowitz dismissed her objection. "Namesake, you said?" He gave Mark an inquiring look. Several years back, after the people aboard the Minnow had officially been declared legally dead, their names had been added to the communal memorial stone the sailing community maintained near the marina. It had been Horowitz, embarrassed but forthright, who had drawn the short straw and telephoned Mark to ask as delicately as possible what his brother's first name had actually been. It was, needless to say, not Brendan.

"Saint Brendan the Navigator," Mark explained. It had been Angie's idea. He had wanted, of course, to name his son after the uncle he would never meet. And had not been able to bear the thought of doing so… because that would, by definition, have also meant naming him after the grandfather he was grateful the child would never have to know. She had thought about that for a while, had done a little research, then sat him down and told him the story of Brendan, patron saint of sailors, who had set out in a tiny boat in search of Eden. He had sailed westward from Ireland, and after a number of adventures, had found a magical island where the sun always shone and the trees were always full of fruit. He had had to look away for a moment, blinking rapidly, and she had kissed him, and it had been settled.

"Gotcha," Horowitz said, and turned his attention back to the baby, letting the little hand grasp his gnarled finger. "Hiya, Kid," he said softly. It was obvious that, no matter what the name represented, no matter what story it was intended to tell, Horowitz had no intention of ever using it. No more than he had used his namesake's.

Mark smiled, warmed by the continuity of it all. "Yeah. He's too little for Cokes quite yet; like you say, we'll have to give it a year or two. Actually, scratch that. He's _always_ going to be too little to drink with you guys… I remember what you jokers are like, and I remember that hangover, too."

Bill smirked, a bit sadly, and glanced at the stools where Entwhistle was not, where the Skipper was not. Where Gilligan was not. "Papa Bear's on to us, fellows. Better behave yourselves!"

"Hey. None of that. We got you home, didn't we? Even took your shoes off nice and neat before tucking you into beddy-bye. Ingrate!"

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

With the exception of a short pilgrimage to leave a lei at the mariners' carved marker, the rest of their trip followed the more standard Hawaiian vacation patterns—they swam and sunbathed on the beach, they took in beautiful scenery, they ate the sort of exotic tropical dishes they never saw in Pennsylvania, and in short, set aside their routines, their workaday irritations and tedium. They were together, they were a family, and they let the gentle happiness of that unity seep into them like the sunshine.

And then, at Angie's quiet insistence, on their last day, they had gone to the marina and taken a short sail around the islands. With Horowitz at the helm. It was no longer true that you could throw a rock and hit three different boats doing island tours; these days, Mark thought, you'd hit at least five. But there had been no question whose boat they would choose; he would not have hurt the old man's feelings by even considering another captain. Angie, as she had readily admitted, was a less-than-stellar sailor, and she spent a good portion of the trip with an unruly stomach and a tense look on her face, but she concealed both as best she could. This, she suspected, was something Mark still needed, whether he knew it or not, and a bit of mild nausea was a small price to pay for her to give it to him.

Mark, somewhat to his own surprise, enjoyed the cruise. The wind in his face was fresh and crisp, and the green silhouettes of the islands were unexpectedly beautiful, framed as they were between the two shades of blue of the sea and the sky. _It was like… every trip he took around the islands was Christmas morning. All brand new and exciting, every single time._ Horowitz had said that, trying to pin down in words his brother's passion for these waters. Contrasting it with the jaded, wonder-stale attitudes of many of the other charterers, who sailed these routes often enough that they stopped seeing their beauty. Stopped seeing the miraculous.

Steering them expertly back into his slip, Horowitz smiled politely as the other passengers disembarked, and winked mischievously at Angie when the last of them was safely gone. "Oy vey," he complained. "Either those tourists get dumber every year or I'm just getting less patient in my old age, I don't know which. Don't answer that, smart aleck," he said quickly.

Mark hadn't intended to. He hadn't heard the original comment, in fact. He was still standing at the rail, looking out to sea with his son in his arms, and he thought he finally understood. _It's just in us, and there's no fighting it. He was living the only way he wanted to live_. The words still haunted him all these years later, as did the memory of a scrawny teenage boy standing his ground as the man who should have been his protector cut him to pieces with his tongue. He glanced down at the sleeping child. _It's going to be different for us,_ he promised silently. _We_ _ **are**_ _that second chance._

Horowitz fumbled in a pocket, pulled out a small box. He handed it to Angie. "Here," he said brusquely. "Me and the other fellows, we all figured he'd be needing this. Just in case he does take after his namesake."

Angie opened the box. Inside, on a thread-fine chain, was a tiny silver four-leafed clover. She looked up at the old man, quizzically. "For good luck?"

He shrugged, uncomfortable with sentimentality. "Ask your husband. He'll remember. Just… we figured that some things ought to get passed down."

She nodded, her eyes suspiciously shiny, and smiled. "We'll bring him out here when he's old enough for those sailing lessons," she promised.

He nodded. "I'll be here. And hey. Don't figure I have to tell you to take good care of the kid, but you guys take care of yourselves, too, you hear?"

"We will," Mark promised. "You do the same, all right?" The airfare to Hawaii was not cheap, and he would not be returning to the islands for at least a couple of years. This was, he suspected, the last time he'd see the old salt, and he was fairly sure that Horowitz knew it, too.

Horowitz nodded. "Aloha," he said simply. "Means hello and goodbye, both at once. So there's never anything sad about saying it, and no goodbye can be forever. Aloha, Kid."

OoOoOoOoOoOoO

Author's note: Fiddler's Green is a sailor's paradise, of which descriptions vary, but the name goes back at least to the nineteenth century. Stories of Saint Brendan's voyage to an island that either was or approximated Eden go back to the sixth century, and scholars like to debate the proportions of truth to myth, but there's at least one school of thought that says that his journey was real, and that he made it all the way from Ireland to America. There is also at least one brave soul who recreated that journey, using authentically recreated sixth century sailing technology, which, from the sounds of it, would also have necessitated an authentic sixth century miracle or two. It seemed an appropriate moniker for the little one, especially as the show's creators went to some trouble to ensure that we never learned Gilligan's real name. Everyone involved with the character seemed to have a different idea of what it was, and naming the child after his uncle in a symbolic rather than a literal manner seemed the best way to show respect to all concerned.

This chapter started out as a post-Rescue film encounter, because it struck me that Gilligan never seems to have so much as considered going back to Pennsylvania, even for a visit, and I wondered how Mark would have reacted to that. And then Brendan appeared, and before I quite knew what had hit me, we got so deeply sappy that there's still maple syrup in my keyboard. I'm genuinely not sure how that happened… but arguing with Angie got me precisely nowhere, so there you go.


End file.
